To the Edge of the World by Christian Wolmar

Author:Christian Wolmar
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781782392040
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

THE NEW SIBERIA

While the railway may have been conceived by its principal promoters as an imperialist and military enterprise, the impact on Siberia was no less profound. For all its failings and inadequacies, the Trans-Siberian had a transformative effect on the region, beyond even the expectations of its most ardent supporters. The clearest change was the rapid increase in population, thanks to increased migration from European Russia. The Siberian migration was, according to its chronicler Donald Treadgold, the greatest movement of people in history up to that time, other than the arrival in the United States of vast numbers of Europeans during the nineteenth century. While the increase in Siberia’s population started before the railway was built, the pace of immigration rose dramatically as a result of its construction, and for a decade or so after the completion of the first section in 1896 there was a virtual stampede to settle in Siberia.

The railway allowed mass travel to Siberia for the first time, opening it up to colonization; it also changed the nature of the region, resulting in the population doubling between 1896 and 1921. As Harmon Tupper concludes, ‘The railway ran at a heavy loss to the Treasury; ordinary passenger trains were late, crowded and dirty beyond belief; the bulk of stationmasters, ticket clerks and train crews were given to slipshod ways and excessive drinking; but in enormous counterweight, the Trans-Siberian opened up the country and brought unparalleled benefits to hundreds of thousands.’1

Settlement of the region by emigrants from European Russia had always been a key part of the justification for its construction. The fact that the Committee for the Siberian Railway had been given control over the colonization process as part of its remit demonstrated that it was integral to the purpose of building the railway. Apart from construction of the railway itself, colonization occupied most of the Committee’s attention and, indeed, took up most of the rest of its expenditure. The Committee’s resettlement programme was based on a study of how Bismarck had attempted to ‘Germanize’ Prussia’s conquered Polish provinces through colonization. Other experiences of mass colonization in United States and Canada were also scrutinized for the lessons that could be gleaned. It was, in short, ‘demographic engineering on a mass scale’2 and it was devised by Anatoly Kulomzin, whom Witte had put in charge of managing the Committee and was also responsible for ‘auxiliary enterprises’, all the other tasks which the Committee had taken on, of which included the emigration process. Like Witte, Kulomzin came from a minor provincial aristocratic family and was a capable administrator, eager to modernize Russia, while retaining the system of absolute monarchy, and also like Witte, he had a long period at the heart of Russian government. Officially, he was the administrative secretary of the Committee of ministers, equivalent in modern British politics to the post of cabinet secretary. If Witte can be considered the architect of the railway, then Kulomzin was equally the guiding mind behind the resettlement programme.

The difficulties of developing a coherent policy in the context of such a conservative regime were legendary.

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